Education Development Board
Tuesday 09 February, 2010
9:15 – 12:00
Venue: Ministry of Education
Draft Minutes
Co-Chair: Steering Committee: Ministry of Ministries
Dr. Attaullah Wahidyar, MOE MoLASMD DM, Mr. Bashiri H.E Dr. Farooq Wardak the Minister
Ms. Heather Cruden, CIDA MoWA DM, Ms. .Mostafavi Mr. M. Seddiq Batman, DM
MoHE M.H. Rashiq/Mr. Amiryar Dr. A. Ghaznawi, DM
Denmark Mr. Poul Erik Rasmussen Mr. Sarwar Azizi, DM
Observers: CIDA Mr. Chris Braeuel Mr. Sarwar Hussiani, DM
LTC Andrii BABAK, ISAF HQ France Ms. Liana Berkowitz Mr. Mirwais Masood (recording secretary)
Ms. Renu Jain, USAID JICA Ms. Junko Taguchi Mr. Abdul Wassay Arian
Mr. Farid Tanai, DANIDA Netherlands Ms. Janneke Vrijland Ms. Susan Wardak
Ms. Celina Jensen, UNESCO Norway Ms. Kristin Hauge Mr. Seddiq Weera
Mr. Khalil Mahshi, IIEP-UNESCO PACE-A Mr. Nick Mills Mr. M. Azim Karbalai
Ms. Marie Caillat, France SCA Mr. Anders Fange Mr. Sayed Asghar Haidari
Mr. Amin Mayel, SCA Sweden Ms. Marianne Von Malmborg Mr. Samir Amiri
Mr. Mohibullah Safi, AusAid UNESCO Ms. Marina Patrier Mr. Qasim Mohseni Mr. Paul Tholen, the Netherlands UNICEF Mr. Fazlul Haque Mr. Sifat Rahimi
Mr. Kin Vetiing, UNAMA USAID MS. Grace Lang Mr. Jalaludin
Mr. Basir Feda, UNAMA World Bank Mr. Hasib Karimzada
Mr. M.A. Arefee, IEEP-UNESCO Chamber of Commerce Mr. Sayed Mujtaba Zahir
UNAMA Mr. Sergiy Illarionon
India Mr. Abdul Gafoor Algur
ANCB Absent BMZ (on behalf of Ms. Anosha Wahidi
(German Embassy
NSDP Mr. Abdul Rahmim Wardak
Australia Embassy Stuart Schaefer
No. / Item / Discussion / Responsible / Action Points1. / Welcome and Introduction / · The meeting started with welcoming and introduction of participants since some participants were new to the meeting.
· In the inaugural remarks the chair welcomed membership and participation of MoHE, MoLSAMD and MoWA to the EDB and called this a remarkable move in the short history of EDB. Also membership of the AusAid was welcomed as another step for strengthening the board.
· The Chair thanked Ms. Janneke Vrijland’s for her remarkable contributions to education of Afghan children and the EDB. It was last meeting of Ms. Vrijland at the EDB as she is leaving the country after completion of her mission in early March 2010.
/ No Action
2. / Opening Remarks of H.E. Dr. Farooq Wardak , Minister of Education / · H.E. the Minister warmly welcomed the participants and thanked them for their outstanding progress in the EDB. He thanked the chair, the co-chair and the secretariat of EDB for their hard-work, making the EDB a success. He especially welcomed joining of MoHE, MoLSAMD and MoWA to the EDB and called this a crucial move for improving coordination, policy discussions and planning. He highlighted that the three ministries along with MoE make the Human Resource Development Sector in the country which their close collaboration is highly essential in order to produce tangible outcomes. He announced that from this date EDB will not serve the purposes of only Ministry of Education but instead would be used as a Sector Coordination Forum.
· H.E. mentioned that his participation in the EDB encompassed four purposes and will be happy to attend EDB meetings in the future as well:
1. To build a closer relationship with the EDB members since it is his first time attending the EDB meeting;
2. To inform the EDB about completion of the NESP II process which is a result of a thorough consultative process in which people from provincial directorates to national level and development partners to EDB members have fully participated;
3. To present the new vision of sectoral approach and a new and committed vision of partnership that is needed. A partnership in which the government is not considered just as a recipient of assistance but as an equal partner that should be involved and consulted in all decision making processes; and
4. To inform the EDB members that he is willing and happy to have policy chat with them in smaller groups on specific issues of interest.
· Thanking the NESP team for their remarkable work H.E. mentioned that following are some unique characteristics of the new strategic plan:
o NESP II is result of an inclusive planning process. It has clear objectives and it draws from field realities and challenges. It is a result-oriented plan that aims to bring the change through clear inputs, outcomes built in a logical framework.
o NESP II is developed based on the lessons learned from the NESP I and a major achievement of this process has been that it in contrast to NESP I which was mostly developed by reliance on technical assistance NESP II has been developed by MoE staff and involvement of relevant departments with limited technical assistance of IIEP-UNESCO—a good example of institutionalization of capacity building.
o It is built based on challenges of the field through findings of the school survey
o Its sits a good vision for partnership but there is need to discuss the new partnership in terms of how it should move and its pace. There is a need for opening a new chapter for partnership that embraces a real partnership for working together and planning together that can help Afghanistan to achieve the EFA and MDGs.
o Currently on access around 42 % (five million) of school aged children have no access to education in Afghanistan. This makes 6.6 % of the total 75 million children who are out of school in the world. On quality only 27 % of teachers meet the minimum qualification standards. There is a huge gender gap in number of female teachers in the country. The curriculum should be improved to be relevant and responsive to the construction needs of Afghanistan and the human resource development sector needs
o NESP II addresses the needs for role of education in encountering the insurgency and restoration of peace and stability in the country. In the 17 provinces of the country where insurgency is high education is low. For example the Eastern provinces of the country represent 10 % of the population but only they have 3 % of school attendance in the country and 1 % of graduation.
· H.E. ended his speech by reiterating that a good plan needs resources and the efforts that should be capitalized to make the plan achievable / No Action
3. / Ministry of Education Presentation on NESP II- MoE / · Mr. Abdul Wassay Arian presented the NESP II on behalf of his H.E. the Minister. Attached along with the minutes please see the presentation. / No Action
4. / Presentation of UNESCO-IIEP on NESP development process / · Mr. Khalil Mahshi from IIEP-UNESCO presented his presentation on NESP formulation process and the capacity building support of IIEP for development of NESP II.
· Mr. Mahshi congratulated the Ministry of Education on its outstanding job taking the leadership of developing NESP II with limited support of IIEP. He stated that this process is a dream coming true capacity building process for which MoE can take the self-pride and self-confidence. He thanked the MoE leadership for closely being involved in the planning process and requested the MoE leadership to maintain this involvement with the same pace in monitoring implementation of the plan.
· IIEP supported MoE in development of NESP I in which much reliance was on international expertise. In NESP II this capacity and dependency has been successfully transformed to the MoE team. Next steps for NESP:
o Efforts should be made to build the capacity of NESP development at the provincial level.
o The MoWA 10 year plan should be linked to MoE plan in terms of curtailing the gender disparity.
o To develop seniors for costing of NESP II.
· Attached please find the full presentation. / No Action
5. / Open Discussion on NESP II / · MoE highlighted that all provincial directors were invited in Kabul last year and they were involved in developing NESP II. All provinces are going to make their mini NESP and accordingly operation plans.
· H.E. maintained that there is not a large increase to see the 8 billion USD proposed budget of the NESP II in terms of annual distribution compared to NESP I. He stated that the annual development and operation budget of NESP I was 800 million USD which in NESP II it is 1.3 billion USD. This increase is due to the pay and grade system as well as to the new number of teachers that should join MoE in coming five years. If education is compared with other sector like agriculture it is not well funded in that term as well.
· SCA suggested that in order to increase value of education there should be a small amount of fee for education e.g. 10 Afs. In response H.E. stated that MoE will try to learn from good examples of other countries like Turkey to ensure that schools run income-generating projects that can involve students. He also stated that private sector also has a role to play in opening and supporting the education sector in the country. He also stated that efforts should be made to transform ownership of education in the country to the people, business sector and NGOs.
· It was raised that plan of MoHE for establishment of community-based colleges clashes with current TEVT and teacher education colleges of MoE which this issue should be resolved between MoHE and MoE.
· Need for more involvement of private sector in TEVT was highlighted. The EDB chair stated that presence of the Cambers of Commerce in EDB Steering Committee and the TEVT working group is to involve the private sector in the education sector.
· The issue of low budget expenditure was another issue that was stressed. H.E. highlighted that last year the budget execution was 43 % which this year it has gone up to 50 %. Further steps will be taken to improve the budget execution.
· H.E. also maintained that there is huge gap in absorption of high school graduates in high education institutions. Last year 79,000 students graduated from high school but only 20,000 of found their ways in government higher education institutions. Next year the number of graduates will increase to 100,000. Thus the there is a lot on shoulder of the sectoral ministries to coordinate their issues and plan for addressing this challenge. / MoE Finance and Admin DM Office / MoE with Ministry of finance to report on budget execution and ways for improving it.
6. / Approval of the Agenda. / The meeting agenda was approved with addition of Education in conflict report under AOB. / EDB Secretariat / Amend the agenda accordingly
7. / Approval of the Minutes / · Minutes of the 11 January meeting was approved without any further changes. / No Action
8. / Business Arising from the Minutes
8.1 / Update on Priority List of Working Groups / Mr. Mirwais Masood updated members that there will be an EDB Working Plan Workshop on Tuesday 16 February in which all the technical working groups of EDB will review and finalize their action plans and policy priority list for 2010. Members were requested for their active participation into the workshop. / No Action
8.2 / EDB Enhancing the Inter-Ministerial Coordination / · The Co-Chair welcomed membership of MoHE, MoWA and MoLSAMD to the EDB and stated that based on new changes the ToR of EDB should be reviewed in a smaller group and shared in the March EDB meeting.
· Ms. Susan Wardak, Ms. Grace Lang, and Mr. Poul Erik Rasmussen volunteered to work with the EDB Secretariat on revision of the new ToR / The EDB Secretariat / To organize the EDB ToR revision meeting and present the ToR in the March EDB meeting after revision.
8.3 / Result of EDB Co-Chair Selection Process / · The EDB Secretariat Director presented results of the Co-Chair selection. He reported that so far out of 18 members 10 members endorsed DANIDA’s nomination. This included the nomination support that the EDB Secretariat received from the Netherlands, USAID, Indian Embassy, Combers of Commerce, PACE-A, JICA, UNESCO, Norwegian Embassy, Swedish Embassy, and SCA.
· Now that DANIDA is winner of the majority votes as part of the process the next step is to share this information with H.E. the Minister and get his endorsement.
· USAID has also offered to co-fund the EDB / The Chair / To seek endorsement of H.E the Minister for selection of DANIDA as the new Co-Chair of EDB.
8.4 / Fast Track Initiative Update—MoE and CIDA / · CIDA briefed the EDB that the cooperation agreements which should have been placed between DANIDA, CIDA and USAID have been finalized and the FTI Assessment MoU will be ready for signature in few days.
9. / Working Groups Reports
9.1 / Tec Voc— UNAMA / The group thanked UNESCO for its technical assistance provided for the Tec Voc provided for the sector. The group is looking at different plans for drawing their priority list for 2010. The group stressed that the relevant ministries need to work together on a joint integrated plan.
It was noted that many studies have been conducted on Tec Voc that they entail sufficient amount of data on existing needs and institutions that provide Tec Voc. Data from these studies should be further reviewed and analyzed in order to produce a holistic picture of the sector.
/ UNAMA
The Chair and Co-Chairs of TEVT Working Group / To share the group action plan for 2010 with the EDB Secretariat.
The issue of community based education should be discussed in next meeting of TEVT and the matter should be reported to EDB March meeting.
9.2 / Teacher Education—TED and WB / · The group has been involved in three important issues:
1. To finalize list of the group priorities for 2010. The group will meet on Thursday 11 Feb to discuss the priorities
2. Based on NESP II to work on the teacher education comprehensive strategic plan which should have clearer objectives, indicators and activities.
3. On 15 February 14000 teachers to attend the competency test / The TED / To share the group action plan for 2010 with the EDB Secretariat.
9.3 / General Education / · The group did not meet on 1st February as planned since the sub-working groups wanted to work on their action plans which will be presented on 16 February Workshop. / The Group Chair/Co-Chair / Share the Action Plan for 2010 with the EDB Secretariat after finalization.
9.4 / LIFE Group / · The group meet and worked on draft of their policy priority list for 2010. Also the group identified its participants for the EDB Action Plan Workshop. / The Group Chair/Co-Chair / Share the Action Plan for 2010 with the EDB Secretariat after finalization.
9.5 / Management Group / · The Group had its first meeting on 31st January with a good participation of partners and MoE departments. A draft ToR of the group has been shared with members for their feedback. Members want more clarity on mandate of the group. The group has also drafted its priorities and action plan for 2010.
· Currently the TA assessment is on going. The provincial plans needs support of partners to identify their support areas / The Group Chair/Co-Chair / Share the Action Plan for 2010 with the EDB Secretariat after finalization.
7. / AOB
7.1 / Report on Education in Violent Conflict / The theme of the 2011 EFA Global Monitoring Report is education in violent conflicts. Currently the team is seeking inputs of countries on their experiences. Afghanistan can participant and send their inputs about the issues in the south, the CBS and other relevant issues. / Mr. Rasmussen / To share link of the website for the report consultation process.
Next Meeting: Monday 08 March is the Women’s day another date will be selected and announced latter
1